Grassroots Restoration:
Holistic Management
for Villages

by Sam Bingham

Acknowledgments

Most of the information in this book and its
organization are based on the the work of Allan Savory
and The Savory Center and are presented here in a
format adapted for use in teaching the basic principles
of Holistic Management in a village context. However,
this general guide does not pretend to cover all
aspects of Holistic Management or enable the reader to
practice it in all situations. It does reflect the
experience of a member of The Savory Center's corps of
Certified Educators in Southern and West Africa and was
reviewed by The Savory Center staff. English, French,
and Russian versions are available from:

This is a "participatory" book!! It includes
suggestions, text, photographs, and drawings from a
number of different sources. If you would like copies
with other photographs, drawings or paintings, or if
you wish to fill up some of the blank spaces with
pictures or writing of any kind, or even if you wish to
change portions of the text, you need only download
this text from the link above and alter it yourself. It
is our hope that this book will grow and change with
the worldwide experience of Holistic Management.

Some rights reserved. You may copy, change, and
freely distribute this manual provided that you credit
the sources (The Savory Center and Sam Bingham), share
the resulting work on a similar basis, and get prior
permission from The Savory Center for commercial use.
For more information see

Introduction

Apart from a few rare cases where communities seem to
have benefited from better organization and new
methods, most attempts to improve the management of
land in the Third World have failed. There is a history
of frustration, problems, waste of resources,
unsustain-able projects, populations that refuse to
participate in programs that violate their true
desires, and occasionally conflict that has led to
bloodshed.

The proof of this is clearly written in the soil,
particularly where new technologies, new methods, and
new social and economic forces have come into play.
With astonishing regularity, projects intended to
restore the productivity of soil have instead led to
failure, often catastrophic failure worsened by
secondary effects that were not foreseen.

Examples in Africa are well known. Recently in Tunisia,
millions of dollars were spent to plant bushes
(Atriplex spp.) on millions of hectares to replace
native forage plants that had disappeared. How many of
these bushes remain alive now? To benefit nomadic
herders in Sudan, Kenya, Mali and Senegal, money was
poured into organizing "livestock units" modeled on the
ranches of Texas. How many remain operational or
profitable today?

All across the semi-arid zones of Africa livestock
wells and water points have been developed. After
several decades, what is their condition now? What has
happened to the land around them? And is there any
place where
natural water points - rivers, springs, lakes - remain
as abundant as they were a hundred years ago?

To raise agricultural production, the world's best
experts, financed by the world's most powerful
institutions, have overseen the industrialization of
farming through the construction of dams and
irrigations systems, miracle crops, and imported
fertilizer. However, everywhere in Africa food
production is falling. Many countries that fought hard
to win political independence, now depend on foreign
powers for food.

In many African countries and elsewhere, livestock has
been banned from millions of hectares "to allow it to
recover." But where has it actually recovered enough to
offset the loss to the people? Thousands of the best
races of sheep, cattle, and goats have been imported
from Europe and America so that Africans might
"increase production while reducing their herds" in
order to restore the soil. But where has production
really increased? How many of these imported animals
have even survived?

The answers to these questions are almost all negative,
and a good many people now look at development projects
as an excuse for cash assistance that has little
connexion to development.

The causes have been well analyzed and discussed. The
critics denounce national bureaucracies, development
agencies, scholars and economists for continued
failure:

- to gain the support of local people who often
actively sabotage projects designed to help them.

- to consider the economic context, pushing people to
produce crops that they can't use or buy inputs
(fertilizer, machines, etc.) that they can't afford.

- to come to terms with the power of politicians,
institutions, and special interests.

- to recognize or correct environmental degradation and
the often dramatic consequences for the society.

Undeniably the people themselves and the state of their
society bear some responsibility for the degradation of
their land.

- the people have poor education and their customs and
traditions are badly adapted to the modern world.

- extension services are poor, and people have little
instruction in new technologies.

- the land is owned collectively or by the State
instead of by the individuals who use it, so they have
little reason to take care of it.

- capital and credit are hard to find.

- governments are corrupt.

- population is high and growing fast.

This list could fill a page or two. These conditions
exist, but do they truly explain the problem? If they
did, then the soil should be fertile and improving in
places where you find the opposite conditions.

Is that the case?

In the west of Texas in the United States land is owned
privately, and the owners have good education, capital,
and the support of the best agricultural schools in the
world. The rural population is thin and falling. The
government, though not perfect, has served the
interests of farmers and stockmen well. For over a
century they have won support for and participated in
countless government programs designed to aid them.

Nevertheless, the soil and the agricultural economy of
West Texas have degraded and badly and probably faster
than the worst examples in Africa. If children in Texas
do not die periodically from kwashiorkor, it is because
the industrial economy of the United States can feed
them. Also, many Texans command enough capital to force
the land to produce by means of ever more fertilizer,
pesticide, irrigation, and other technologies. That
cannot hide the fact that vast areas of pasture that
once nourished immense herds of bison are hardly
distinguishable from the most desertified ranges of
Chad or Mali.

The water table is falling also in Texas, even in rainy
years. Rivers once rich in fish have been dry now for
decades except for the occasional flash flood. As in
Sudan, you can find no end of fields sterilized by
salt. And after the government has spent hundreds of
millions of dollars to fight rodents, weeds, and brush
that are blamed for ruining the land, they have
retreated nowhere, while people, as in Africa, leave
the land for the big cities. And there crime and
poverty continue to grow.

If, during the same period of time, the same
degradation of land has occurred in Texas and similar
areas in Africa, we should look at the ways these
places are alike, not how they are different. In both
places people analyze their problems and make decisions
in the same way.

Recently scientists have had to admit that many
traditional systems of using land were in fact
extremely efficient and ecologically sound.
Unfortunately, over the ages this knowledge has often
become so ritualized in custom that even those who
practice it have difficulty seeing the principles that
made it work so they can adapt it to new conditions.
Certainly scientists have done little better. In the
face of a crisis or a new situation, we all, from the
producers in their villages and tents to the
administrators in the central government, usually think
in the same way.

Maybe this is the cause of our failure - how we think
and make decisions.

It is possible that the whole world fails to see things
as they really are. Not long ago everyone "knew" that
the sun circled around the earth and laughed at anyone
who thought otherwise. We don't like to admit it, but
often we see only what we expect to see or what we have been
taught to see. We lack the imagination or the
experience to see anything else.

Consider this drawing for example.

Is it a little girl looking at a glass of water or a
woman with her bucket scrubbing the floor on her hands
and knees (seen from the rear)?

Nature and ecology are like that. Here is a photo of
a bare land at the end of the dry season. For these
young people the scene is normal. Their ancestors saw a
savannah rich in trees and thick perennial grass.

We see what we expect to see, what we are conditioned
to see, and unfortunately we react according to
reflexes conditioned by experience and instincts that
we cannot always trust. In general we arrive at a
decision by the following steps:

1. We set a goal, which is almost always to: produce
something; eliminate, control or preserve something; or
resolve a pressing problem.

2. We look at our resources, which we understand to be:
energy, minerals, plants, animals, soil, and water.

3. We look for the expertise and financing to make and
carry out a plan, and usually this plan calls for
technology, rest (take the animals off the land until
it recovers) or fire.

4. We evaluate the plan. Is it affordable? backed up by
research? politically acceptable? likely to give quick
results?

5. Finally we choose the best solution and pursue it
until it fails.

We fail because this way of thinking and acting ignores
several hidden truths. The first is that any plan
touching natural resources affects the whole ecosystem.
All actions aimed at a specific situation will produce
unforeseen secondary effects. More importantly, nature,
even without human intervention, is always dynamic so
that an action that is correct today may be wrong
tomorrow.

Consider different steps for making your plans.

1. Instead of focussing on a situation in crisis, look
at all the elements involved in your management - all
the diverse people, financial and natural resources,
and land. Having that in mind insures against a narrow
point of view.

2. Instead of concentrating on a list of problems and
special production concerns, work out a single goal,
shared by all participants that describes what you want
to achieve in terms of: quality of life, the production
necessary to maintain it, and a realistic vision of a
countryside that can sustain that production long term.
Such a "holistic goal" assures a global vision and
strong support and does not ignore the impact of your
plan on the land.

3. Instead of think about your resources as static
objects - energy, minerals, plants, animals, soil, and
water, think about the dynamic processes of the
ecosystem - the tendency of communities (human and
biological) to develop themselves, the cyclical
movement of water and minerals, the flow of energy
through living organisms.

4. Instead of limiting ourselves to the conventional
tools (technology, rest, and fire) why not use as tools
the impact of animals (for manure, urine, and even the
trampling of wild and domestic herds) and other living
organisms whose populations we can nurture by our
management.

5. Instead of judging our plans only by the ordinary
criteria (affordability, research, politics, immediate
results, etc.) add some tests to assure that the plan
actually leads toward your holistic goal, and that it
is socially, economically, and environmentally sound.

6. Instead of stubbornly following your plan until it
fails, assume that it contains faults and that the
dynamism of nature itself will soon make it obsolete.
Then you will watch your progress with an eye to
continually changing the plan so that it must succeed.

Biodiversity

"In holistic management, when we talk of the loss of
biodiversity, we mean it in the most general sense -
not only in relation to the number of species, but to
genetic diversity, diversity of ages, and to the mass
of living matter in general.

Allan Savory, Holistic Management Quarterly

When we speak of diversity in terms of age structure,
we refer to the need for members of all ages. All
"good" species may be present, but if we find only
adult examples and no young ones, they are on their way
to disappearing. This is true also of the quantity of
"living matter". We may find members of a species
represented, but if there are only a few the situation
is not healthy.

Agriculture cannot survive without biodiversity. When
biodiversity drops too far, the crops and herds that
support civilization and civilization itself will fail.

Without agriculture there would be no commerce,
manufacturing, or government because everyone would
have to hunt or gather wild plants for survival.

There is a widespread belief, particularly among
scientists, that technology will soon end our need for
biodiversity. However, even if we produce all our food
from special seeds grown in pure chemicals, that would not put an
end to our problems. Soil
erosion would continue to silt up our water courses,
destroy our irrigation works and the life of our lakes
and seas. The air on which all life depends would
quickly become unbreathable unless green plants renewed
it constantly.

Poor land means poor people, political strife, and
social decay. Biodiversity is the only true wealth that
any civilization can claim. When we lose biodiversity
we lose "capital". This is why management must be based
on the "processes" in action in the ecosystem that give
us diversity and why we should judge all actions by
their effect on these processes.

A step ahead in the dynamics of a community, an
increase in the flow of energy, or an improvement in
the cycles of water and minerals are what build
"capital".

Symptoms of biodiversity loss

As important as biodiversity may be for our planet, how
do you recognize its loss? Here are a few signs:

- Creation and expansion of deserts (desertification).

- Increase in the frequency of floods and droughts.

- Drying out of the water table and natural water
sources.

- Rapid soil erosion and silting of stream beds, dams,
and estuaries.

- Appearance of dunes in sandy regions.

- Decline in the productivity of land and/or
increase
in the cost of maintaining productivity.

- Infestations of weeds.

- Infestations of birds and destructive insects in
great number.

- Increasing disease problems with plants and animals.

- Conflict among people.

- Financial problems in villages, cities and towns.

- Failure and abandonment of cities and their
industries.

Causes of biodiversity loss

Often when biodiversity loss is discussed, it is
described as the result of ignorance, lack of financial
resources, or too many animals. Sometimes we blame
drought or the climate in general. Others accuse
nomadic people, saying that they do not care well for
land they do not own. That has often been an excuse for
making them settle in one place. Finally we hear that
the land itself is too steep, too rough, or the soil
too fragile.

But if you look at the loss of biodiversity around the
world you quickly see that it is happening in
environments of all kinds. In all parts of the world
the variety of species is declining, and many species
are less and less plentiful. Evidently "economic
development" itself - our management and exploitation
of the environment - threatens our natural wealth, EVEN
THOUGH all true progress depends on that wealth.
Holistic Management tries to resolve this sad but
ancient paradox.

Define the "Whole"

Holistic management means managing a "whole", not just
parts. You must therefore decide what people,
resources, land, and money makes up the whole you plan
to manage. Every person belongs to many different
wholes - a family, a community, a region, a nation. You
can always go further and include in your "whole" the
environment that influences your family and community.
However, remember:

A piece of land by itself is never a whole, and you
can't manage it holistically. You must also consider
people who influence that land, people living elsewhere
who are influenced BY that land, and the money or other
wealth that comes from the land or can be spent on it.

To manage a "whole", think first about the people in
it, because they will make the decisions, do the work,
and judge the results. They fall into two groups -
those who will set a holistic goal and are responsible
for achieving it, and those will be resources and can
help you achieve it.

Look for reasons to include people rather than reasons
to exclude them.

Whoever leads an effort to manage holistically - often
government agents or community leaders - should spend a
great deal of time explaining what it is before trying
to make any decisions. This may require many visits,
meetings, conversations, and trips to other
communities. Do not begin before building trust and
open communications among all participants.

- Take time to explain and show why continuing the
present way of doing things will lead to greater
problems and that another way is open. Interested
people should have time to talk about new ideas with
their families and others, so their ideas also become
part of community discussions. There may be some people
or groups who have strong feelings but are afraid to
speak out in public meetings. Every effort should be
made to hear them in situations where they can speak
freely and comfortably.

Making a Holistic Goal

Make no plans and take no action before the people of
the "whole" understand holistic management, have
decided that they wish to take action, and are
satisfied that they will be able to participate. Then,
the goal of the plan must come from the people. Very
often a leader - land owner, government agency,
forestry service - sets a goal and then asks for public
support. This is backwards and leads to disaster. First
find out what the public, the people of the "whole"
want.

If the "whole" involves large numbers of people,
representatives of different groups will have to set
the holistic goal. Before any serious talk begins,
however, it is important to create an atmosphere of
trust and open communication. It must be clear that
goal-setting is not an occasion for politicking against
each other but finding a path that will benefit
everyone. Two habits of human nature make this
difficult.

Most people start talking at once about problems.
"There's no water. Weeds are taking over the fields."
This scatters the discussion.
Everyone has a different problem. It also kills hope
and the spirit of action. Nobody would start a meeting
by saying, "The problem is that someday we're all going
to die. What are we going to do about it?" Ask people
what they want, not what's wrong.

Once people start talking about problems, they soon
argue over what to do about them. This scatters the
discussion even more because everyone has a different
idea. Worse, once people fight for their own ideas they
don't willingly work together to explore new ones. Ask
what people want. They will have time later to think
about how to get it, and you want them to look forward
as well as backward to what they already know.

A holistic goal has three parts. Even where people do
not read and write it is important to end the
discussion of each part with a written statement that
you can repeat and improve over time.

Quality of Life (Values)

Participants should describe what they consider a "good life." Most people will begin by listing "things" they want - money, animals, a good house. This is natural and not unhealthy. Most people are never allowed to dream in public. The person who leads the talking, however, must try to lead the discussion to the deeper meaning behind "things" and to questions that aren't "things" at all.

"Big herds and fields" become "food security". "A
borehole" becomes "health and relief for women". And
the quality of life will include items like education,
friendly relations with neighbors, religion, keeping
families together.

Participants should describe what they consider a "good
life". Most people will begin by listing "things" they
want - money, animals, a good house. This is natural
and not unhealthy. Most people are never allowed to
dream in public. The person who leads the talking,
however, must try to lead the discussion to the deeper
meaning behind

Forms of Production

This is a list of what the "whole" must produce to give
people the life they desire. It will include "products"
like crops, livestock, crafts, herbs, firewood, and
wild game; but also people like teachers, mechanics,
and healers; and activities like administration of
justice, help for the needy, recreation for the young,
communications with neighbors, and commerce.

Future Resource Base

This is a description of what the land and
people must become to support the production
necessary for the quality of life that people seek. It
should describe water sources, rivers, soil, plants,
and animals in a way that is realistic according to
people's knowledge. It may well include things that
disappeared before most participants were born but
remain in the memory of old people and in stories.

The holistic goal should be discussed until everyone in
the "whole" can embrace it. The discussion is as
important as the holistic goal itself, and in a
healthy community it never ends. As people and
situations change, the holistic goal must
change. You don't have to make it perfect to act,
however. Start with a simple holistic goal that
everyone agrees to, and build on it over time.

Guidelines for setting a holistic goal

1. Describe the life you want, not things you want
to buy.

Example: Wealth and not worrying about food and water
may describe quality of life in your holistic goal.
Building a cement house and eating beef every day are
details you can decide (and argue about!) later. When
you have wealth, you can buy those things you want. Why
worry about eating beef or chicken when you can't get
either yet.

2. No numbers, hectares, kilograms, dollars, or
anything else that you can count or measure should be
in your holistic goal.

Example: Meat and money from livestock is a form of
production. Having 100 cows is, again, too much detail.
You may have to sell and buy cattle a hundred times.
You may find goats and sheep will bring you closer to
your true holistic goal. If 100 cows is your holistic
goal, you will miss these opportunities.

3. Do not put "tools" or "actions" in your holistic
goal. Later you may test lots of tools and actions
to find the best way to reach your holistic goal. Don't
argue about them now.

Example: Growing your own food is a form of production
and may be important to your quality of life. Dreaming
of a large field of maize will keep you from seeing
other possibilities. You may choose to plant your
fields in many ways with many crops. One big field of
maize may not be the best idea.

4. Do not forbid any "tools" or "actions" in your
holistic goal.

Example: Healthy soil and high biodiversity describe a
future resource base. Never using chemical pesticides
is a vow that may get in your way some day.. To have
healthy soil and high biodiveristy you will probably
try not to use chemicals, but a time may come when you
should.

5. Make your holistic goal step by step in proper
order.

1) Quality of Life - your values

2) What you must produce to enjoy that life.

3) Your land and the way you must be regarded by the
people in your resource base - not as matters stand now
but as they must become to give you and your
grandchildren the quality of life they want.

Give special care to the land part of the holistic
goal. Everything depends on that. In many countries of
Africa and elsewhere people gave their lives for the
goal of political independence, but without healthy
land no nation can ever enjoy true independence. Many
people today have never seen healthy land and do not
believe that grass grew and water ran all year in
places that are desert now. Often old people are the
ones who can describe what the land could become in the
future.

The Four Pillars of the Ecosystem

After all the discussion of a holistic goal and making
decisions that respect the "whole" of human, natural,
and financial resources some voices will still cry from
the crowd, "It's because of the drought in these last
years that the water level is falling. All we need is a
borehole and a good diesel pump," or "It was the
drought that killed all our trees. The government ought
to make us a plantation of eucalyptus like they did
at____," or "The problem is that the ticks and worms
weaken our stock, and they lose their young to
brucellosis. We just need some veterinary help and a
dipping program," or "Weeds and bushes are taking over
our fields and grazing land. We just need a way to kill
them back."

How do you answer these requests? Without doubt they
would silence the complaints quickly, at least for now.

First of all such requests must not become goals in
themselves. They all involve technological tools that
may not have any connexion to the quality of life or
the landscape foreseen in the holistic goal. More
importantly, the problems and constraints that people
present are often symptoms of deeper troubles in the
ecosystem. Until these are healed, the pumps,
plantations, medicines, and poisons will not keep the
problems from coming back.

Nature is like a trick picture that seems simple, but
the artist has hidden a more important picture behind
the simple one. The true picture can only be seen by
looking at the basic processes that actually produce
everything that we see in nature - and human life.

A cup made by faces

1. The Water Cycle

Everyone knows that water circulates between the earth
and the sky. This is the "Water Cycle". It keeps going
all the time because of the power of the sun.
Nevertheless, there is a big difference between a water
cycle that passes through plants, animals, fields, and
the village well before going back to the sky and a
water cycle that runs off the land or dries off without
benefiting life anywhere.

In most cases in the drier regions of Africa, a damaged
water cycle is the main cause of degradation and
poverty. The amount of water lost is astonishing. If
only half of a yearly rainfall of 750 millimeters
evaporates or runs off, every 100 hectares loses
375,000,000 liters
of water. Many areas, however, lose 95% of their water
almost instantly. A true drought is a small matter
compared to the disaster of a water cycle that poor.

THE IMPORTANT QUESTION IS NOT THE TOTAL RAINFALL, IT
IS THE "EFFECTIVE RAINFALL." HOW MUCH WATER ACTUALLY
SUPPORTS LIFE?

If the water table is falling, a new well will not
make it rise. You will have to improve the water cycle
over a wide area. Instead of making deeper wells a
goal, it is better to have a holistic goal that calls
for a healthy water cycle.

Rain dries up or runs off, eroding the land

Rain stays on the land and supports life

Signs of a poor water cycle:

- Bare ground that allows water to evaporate and run
off quickly.

- A crust covering the soil. This crust may become very
hard and cemented by algae. This stops water from
soaking into the ground and makes it run off. It also
keeps seeds from starting, so there are fewer plants to
catch the rain and use it.

- Erosion

- Changing plant communities. Those that grow in dry
places take the place of plants that need more water,
even when rain seems plentiful.

- A falling water table and loss of springs and flowing
streams.

The cure for a damaged water cycle is to cover the soil
with plants and litter and break up the crust.

The Mineral (Nutrient) Cycle

The mineral cycle is movement of all the nutrients that
living things take from the soil and air as they grow
and give back when they die. Green plants take them in
through their roots and leaves. Animals may eat the
plants, but in the end they go back to enrich the soil
as manure, urine, or the leftovers of rot and decay and
new plants will use them again. Obviously the richness
of life in this cycle suffers if it is blocked at any
point or if nutrients are lost from the cycle.

In "brittle environments" such as the drier regions of
Africa, both problems occur often.
Except in the wet season and in the stomachs of large
animals, these areas lack many of the microbes and
small organisms that in wetter places cause old dead
vegetation to decompose quickly. Old leaves and grasses
may stay where they grew for years, blocking the cycle,
because nothing goes back to the soil.

Worse, old rotted vegetation (organic matter) catches
and holds nutrients, so when dead plants do not return
to the soil, nutrients that were already there are
washed away by water. This leaves the soil even more
sterile.

Signs of a weak mineral cycle:

- Bare ground with little organic matter so that
erosion and leaching carry off nutrients.

- Old vegetation, leaves, and grass that stay in place
until they become grey and useless. Even plant litter
and the manure of animals dries out and stays on the
surface without decomposing and building the soil.

The remedies in brittle areas are to cover the soil and
put old vegetation back into it with the trampling feet
of heavy animals. Animals also help when they turn
plants into manure, which is already partly decomposed
and increases the number of small creatures that
complete the process.

It also helps to encourage all forces that can bring
nutrients from deep in the soil up where more plants
can use them. Bushes and trees reach deep with their
roots but drop their leaves on the surface where they
help support crops and grass. Rodents, termites, and
ants bring up grains of dirt from lower levels, which
is one reason why termite hills make good fertilizer.

Mulch and compost help restore crop fields, and animals
can also add their manure, although a herd must not
stay too long in a bare field or it will compact the
soil.

The Steps of a Succession

Succession follows a different path according to the
climate, the condition of the soil, and the condition
of the land at the start. Nevertheless, in semi-arid
areas where the wild conditions of the past were
forested savannah, the natural restoration of a crop
field might well follow the stages described here. Each
stage presents conditions that favor the development of
the next stage.

One year after the field is left fallow, it is
covered by annual plants that last only one season.
Wild creatures are mostly insects and small animals and
birds that come seeking seeds.

Five years later some bushes and perennial grasses
appear but most of the plants are still annuals. You
may also find ants and termites and the holes of
rodents.

After a decade, perennial grasses begin to replace
the annuals and true trees are growing here and there.
Jackals and hares hide in the bushes and herds of
larger game pass occasionally.

Finally the old field once more looks like the
healthy savannah around it. You will find there all
kinds of plants and animals large and small, including
grazing animals and predators.

3. Succession - Community Dynamics

Succession is the process of development that happens
in any living community because its members - animals,
plants, and humans - are trying to better themselves.
(When speaking about more than plants and animals you
can also talk of Community Dynamics)

If no outside force stops succession, it will always
lead toward a more complex and productive community. A
simple community usually means a low level of
succession. You will find few different kinds of
plants, although there may be a lot of one or two
kinds. Most of them will probably be annuals. Animal
life also is likely to include big infestations of
single species. These conditions are not stable.

On the other hand a community at a high level of
succession will have many different kinds of plants and
animals, even though none dominates. Biodiversity will
be high. There will be a mix of soft and woody plants,
many perennials, and young and old members of all
species. As the level of succession rises, the
community becomes more stable and resistant to
infestations, drought, and flood.

Succession of wild plants and animals also has an echo
in domestic animals and crops. For example, if the
livestock in a community changes over time from -goats
and camels to sheep and then to cattle, and cattle that
produce lots of milk, you know that succession is
moving forward. If fields that once produced maize and
a variety of vegetables now only grow millet,
succession is being pushed back.

Where bad management has pushed succession back, the
cure is usually to improve the water and mineral cycles
and to encourage biodiversity in all forms, including
wild animals and predators. Nevertheless, succession is
a powerful force all by itself. All communities will
progress if the blockages

are taken away, although it is difficult to predict
exactly how they will change. After years of
degradation, people often forget the landscape known by
their ancestors and believe their land must always be
the way they see it now. Then, restoring the landscape
of the past might become part of a holistic goal. You
can at least hope for that.

Succession advances by steps. Each stage prepares the
way for the next one. This also explains why many
development projects fail. Giving people milk cows will
not help a village if the level of succession will only
support goats. Tree planting will fail if the level of
succession doesn't match the needs of the seedlings.
They will die like a bulldozer in a village that has
neither a mechanic nor spare parts nor money for
fuel.

In this case the trees are succeeding thanks to the
death of the badly adapted bulldozer!

All around this village, succession is retreating
under pressure of bad management. The forest, still
visible in the distance, gives way to annual grass (a
light line in the photo). Nearer still, Caletropus
bushes find an ideal home on the bare land. The energy
of the sun, that once made the villagers rich in
livestock and wild game in the cool shade of open
woodland, now only bakes them in their poverty.

4. Energy Flow

Energy from the sun puts the other ecosystem processes
into motion. The sun returns water to the sky. It gives
green plants and all the living things that depend on
them the force to grow. Without it there would be no
succession. This is energy flow. It is not a cycle,
because power from the sun is simply used up. It does
not return to the sun.

All production and wealth depends on harvesting the
energy of the sun through the leaves of green plants.
Bright sun on bare ground of course gives us nothing
but heat, but some communities harvest and use more
energy than others. Dense plant communities catch
more
energy than scattered plants. Plants with broad leaves
catch more than those with narrow leaves. Perennials
that stay green long into the dry season catch more
than annuals that die quickly and turn brown. In cold
climates a mix of plants that enjoy both warm and cool
weather increases energy flow.

The ecosystem is also more productive where the energy
harvested by plants supports a rich animal life as
well.

How to "See" Through the Ecosystem

In many villages around the world you will find the
same "problems" and constraints.

- Wells and springs are drying up.

- Soil is losing its fertility.

- Some kind of weed is taking over fields.

- The livestock can't find enough to eat.

These "problems" can be easily solved.

- Drill the boreholes deeper or build a dam.

- Bring in some chemical fertilizer and clear more land
for planting.

- Spray herbicides on the weeds.

- Exchange the skinny local livestock breeds for new
breeds that will grow fast if you keep them penned and
feed them cottonseed cake and forage crops that you
raise, harvest, and carry to them.

On the other hand, if you look at the situation from
atop the four pillars of the ecosystem, you will see it
quite differently. Consider the case of a real village
that we shall call Makuza which means "Hope" in several
Bantu languages.

Water Resources

The villagers complain about the lack of water, but
even though some years have been much drier than others
the average has remained about the same for the last
twenty. Their problem is a poor water cycle. If
they can increase the infiltration
even a small amount and save rain now being lost, their
springs and streams, in time, will run again. Otherwise
the water crisis will return in spite of the new
boreholes and dams.

Fertility

Makuza farmers used to plant a field for three years
and then leave it for five or six. Also, the fields
were small and scattered about the community. Now the
population has grown. Some fields never rest at all and
the same crop, millet, is planted every year in big
fields that cover vast areas.

The trouble is the mineral cycle. The new
practices take much from the soil and put nothing back.
If farmers cannot rest the fields and allow
succession to restore them, then they must find another
way. They can add chemical fertilizer but this often
destroys the organic matter that keeps nutrients in the
cycle. Mulch, manure, rotation of crops, mixing several
crops in the same field, planting legumes that produce
nitrogen, are alternatives that respect the
cycle as it works in nature.

Weeds

The villagers say that a certain plant that once grew
only here and there is now destroying their fields.
They say that it has changed character and become
aggressive and evil-minded.

However, this is question of succession. The
weed likes bare, dry, and poor, soil. When the land was
covered and fertile it was hard to find, but when the
people began to grow millet year after year without
rest, their big fields all became a perfect home for
it. Even hoeing spread it because the cut roots could
grow new sprouts. Herbicide may kill the weed this
year, but it will come right back until succession
moves the crop land to a level it does not like.

The farmers might change crops from year to year, plant
different crops side by side in smaller patches, and
bring back the life of the soil with mulch and manure.
If conditions are not the same everywhere, the weed
will not grow everywhere.

Forage

Government experts are convinced that Makuza has too
many animals, because two years out of three they run
out of grass before the rainy season. The villagers,
however, insist that the problem is lack of rain,
because when the rain is good, they have enough grass.
They want the government to give them cottonseed cake
and grain in "bad" years.

Actually the problem is energy flow. Cutting
down the livestock will not necessarily change the fact
that the plants are not capturing as much energy as
they might. Bringing in feed grain just means
bringing energy from elsewhere.

The best answer would be to increase energy
flow. That means managing in a way that:

- Increases the number of plants.

- Improves water and mineral cycles to favor plants
with bigger leaves.

- Allows succession to advance to the level of
perennial plants that stay green longer and also grow
some in dry years.

Even at the end of the dry season, these bunches of
Andropogon are still growing green leaves, which you
can see as dark spots in a dried out field.

Brittle and Non-Brittle Environments

African desert, South American jungle, and North
European pasture look very different, but for a very
long time, most people tried to manage all environments
by the same rules. The first rule was, "If you harvest
too much from any land, it will degrade." If you
harvest grass with livestock, and your grass
disappears, then you have too many animals. In all
parts of the world where grassland is turning into
desert, scientists and experts of all kinds blamed
"over-grazing" and said reducing herds or taking the
animals off the land entirely was the only cure.

However, it is now clear that the world is not so
simple. If you take the livestock out of an English
pasture or a jungle clearing, succession will soon turn
it into forest. If you take them out of a low rainfall
Africa grassland, succession may run backwards and turn
the land to desert. The difference is "brittleness". "Brittle" is not the same as
"fragile". The jungle is fragile, because it can be
easily destroyed, but it is not brittle.

Most arid and semi-arid land is brittle, but low
rainfall is not the only thing that makes it brittle.
In brittle areas:

- The year is divided into wet and dry seasons.

- The air is generally very dry.

- The rains are often either far above or far below
average.

In non-brittle areas:

- Rain may fall at any time of year.

- The air is usually damp.

- In most years the rain is close to average.

In brittle zones a healthy mineral cycle
depends on large grazing animals to eat plants and
return nutrients to soil as manure and litter. The
microbes and many small creatures that cause dead grass
and leaves to rot and decay cannot survive well in the
long periods of dryness. Thus, people and their animals
must take responsibility for the health of the
land.

In non-brittle areas, such as northern
Europe, the mineral cycle does not depend on
people or their animals. Very active microbes thrive in
the damp air and quickly turn dead plants back into
soil. They are even building soil on the roof of this
house, and one day the forest will cover it.

Bare Ground

In brittle areas, poor management often pushes
succession backwards. Complex communities lose their
variety of plants and animals until they come to a
state of bare ground. Bare ground itself is a sign that
the land is brittle, because you will seldom see it in
non-brittle environments.

Worse, bare ground means that all four of the ecosystem
processes are in very bad condition. The life in the
soil will die unless it is covered by plants and
litter. They protect it as an animal's skin protects
the meat from loss of blood and from the heat, cold,
and dryness. Naked earth dies like a skinned
animal.

- Bare ground dries quickly. It then becomes hard
which means that the next rain dries and runs off even
faster. The water cycle does not support
life.

- Bare ground loses its fertility because nothing
replaces the minerals lost to erosion and
leaching.

- Bare ground means succession has gone back
to zero, and the environment is extremely unfriendly to
the seeds of most plants.

- Bare ground only reflects the energy of the
sun back into the sky where it only serves to heat the
air.

To free the power of succession and reverse the
degradation of brittle land, NOTHING is more important
than understanding and fixing the problem of bare
ground. There are two key ideas to keep in
mind.

The Crust (Soil Capping)

In brittle areas, especially in the tropics where the
ground never freezes, bare ground will develop a hard
crust or cap. This closes the soil so that neither
water nor oxygen can get down into it. It increases the
runoff of water and the danger of
floods and stops seeds from growing. The hardness and
extent of a soil cap will tell you what will happen to
succession before plants actually change. A
heavy crust between plants always means danger.

1. The first crust forms after a rain. You can
easily break it with your fingers.

2. After a few seasons, the crust will thicken, but
will still break under your feet.

3. After several more years a mature crust may
become extremely hard. If the soil has even a little
clay it will become like cement under your feet. Often
the same algae that grows on rocks will turn a mature
crust dark.

Litter

In dry climates, succession may never cover the ground
with living plants. This means that most of the cover
will have to come from leaves and beaten down grass
from past seasons. This cover
is far more important to the future health of
the land than the present condition of the plants.

Seen from a distance, this grasslandseemshealthy....

...however, if you look straight down into it, you
will see that it is in truth degrading, because all the
plants are mature adults, widely scattered on soil that
is bare and capped.

On the other hand, this area where the old
grass has been beaten down will improve because the
soil is well-protected. Toss a coin ten times and count
how many times it falls on litter, on living plants, or
on bare ground, and you will have a good idea about the
ecological health of that place.

Animal Impact

This is absolutely essential for the health of
grassland. It is even more important than stopping
overgrazing!!

To break crusted soil and turn dead plants into useful
litter few forces do better than the trampling hooves
of livestock or wild animals. When this important
relationship between animals and plants in brittle
environments is broken, desertification usually
follows. Energy flow, the water and mineral cycles and
succession suffer without large grazing animals.

In wild conditions, antelope, buffalo and other herding
animals spend much time crowded very close together
because packs of predators (lions, wild dogs, wolves)
always follow them. In these very dense herds the
animals do not step carefully among the plants. They
trample them down and stir up the ground as well,
breaking soil crusts and grinding up litter and their
own dung.

Where domestic livestock are the only large grazers, it
is up to people to make them break up crusted soil and
beat litter down onto the ground. Animal impact can
also break down brush and open the land for grass.

Without animal impact, soil in brittle environments
will become more and more open to wind, sun, and rain.
The flow of energy above and below ground will fall.
Bare ground between plants will increase. Succession
will stop, and in extreme cases slip back toward
desert.

In these cases, tight herding and extremely high
density followed by long recovery periods are sometimes
the only way to restart succession. A herd as dense as
the one pictured here will do much more to bring back
perennial plants to this grassland than simply stopping
overgrazing of plants.

Time, Grazing, and Rest

Unfortunately livestock and big game can also badly
damage rangeland, and it is important to understand
exactly how this happens. When you hear people say that
an area is "overgrazed" they usually mean that there
are too many animals.
"Look, the stock has eaten everything. You will have to
reduce the herd, so that the land can restore itself."
This opinion misses several key points.

Overgrazing

The difference between grazing that helps succession
move forward and grazing that turns the land to desert
has little to do with the number of animals. It is a
question of time. These drawings show how
overgrazing can happen
one plant at a time, even where there is only one
sheep.

1. 1. When grass is bitten off.... 2. It uses energy
from its roots to grow new leaves.

3. If the sheep is still there and eats the
new leaves before the roots have grown back, the
plant will borrow more energy from its roots.

4. If it has to do this many times without
ever gaining its strength...it will die.

You will find overgrazing anywhere that ANY grazing
animals spend too much time!

Why reducing the herd will not stop overgrazing.

Most people believe that overgrazing happens because of
overstocking. However, as the last page showed, one
sheep can kill some plants if it has the time. In the
same time a hundred sheep of course will kill a hundred
times as many, if they stay in the same place. In the
end, however, it doesn't matter how fast this happens.
Over time any killing
of plants will degrade a large area.

To keep plants from being overgrazed, you have to
control the time that animals spend near them.
These drawings show the process of overgrazing.

Here is a healthy range with a new water point and
three kinds of plants.

From top: 1. Very nutritious grasses of a high level
of succession.

2. Bushes and less desirable grasses of a lower
succession.

3. Annuals that thrive at a low level of
succession.

The animals only graze far enough from the water to
satisfy themselves. They may choose many different
kinds of plants to find the diet they need. Many of
these will become even tastier when they begin to grow
back because the leaves will be young and tender.

In time the plants that are grazed again and again
begin to dissappear, and the animals go farther to find
what they need.

Finally nothing is left but bare ground and plants
wilth little food value. Often at this point, weeds and
bushes move in that animals will not eat at all, and
they are blamed for "taking over."

Running only half the number of animals will not
change this process!! The smaller herd will only take
twice as long to do the same damage.

Signs of overgrazing in brittle areas

Look for perennial grasses - those that grow back each
year from the same roots. If you find few, ask old
people of the area what plants they remember from their
youth. If there has been a big
change, overgrazing might be one reason, but it is
probably not the only one. Fire and rest may also be to
blame.

- If you find the lost plants still growing in
protected places (in the middle of bushes and between
rocks) overgrazing is one reason why they probably
don't grow everywhere.

- During the growing season, look at the most
desirable plants. Do you find most of them bitten down
during most of the season?

- Look at the most desirable bushes. Overgrazed
(overbrowsed) bushes often have dead branches. They
hide their leaves in thorns or twigs. Sometimes they
are deformed in a way that shows what animal is doing
the damage - horses, goats, camels, cows, etc.

- Bushes that do not suffer from overbrowsing will
have longer straighter branches, softer leaves, and
less dead wood.

Experiment

You can also demonstrate the principles of overgrazing
with children instead of animals.

Put into a bowl:

- 20 large pieces of candy

- 20 small pieces of meat

- 20 pieces of bread

Let 15 children choose three items. Then look at what
they have left.

If you ask only seven children to choose three things,
what is left?

How many children would you have to eliminate to save
the candy? Probably you would have to send away nine
children to save a single piece of candy.

After the candy is gone, the children will "overgraze"
the meat. After the meat, they will take the bread. The
same thing happens with plants and animals. With them
it doesn't matter if there are 50 or 500 head of
cattle. The tastiest plants will be overgrazed anyhow.

Livestock of course aren't looking for candy meat and
bread. To them some plants may be "tasty" in some
seasons and not in others. They may choose some when
they are young and tender but not when they are old.
The point, however, is the same.

Overgrazing doesn't happen to places. It happens to
plants - one at a time. Over time, more animals can
overgraze more plants. Places with good water and soil
often have the most desirable plants, especially in dry
times. Because of overgrazing, however, these places
that should have the best forage often have the
worst.

Rest

Resting land means that no animals graze there and no
fires are set. In brittle environments rest is the most
frequent cause of bare ground. It is more
serious than overgrazing, because few people understand
the danger.

1. A healthy bunch of grass grows tall and produces
seed, but nothing eats it, nor cuts it, nor burns it.
Without animal impact to knock it down and turn
it into litter, its stems and its leaves will remain
standing until they become grey and useless.

2. The next year the old leaves block the sun and
the growth of new leaves. You will often see them
weakly sprouting around the base of a plant that is
mostly dead. The roots may grow a bit deeper, but they
don't spread as they do when the plant is healthy.

3. After several years, the old dead leaves become
so thick that the center of the plant begins to die.
Often the whole center dies and can be easily pulled
out and all that is left is a ring.

A total rest, as you find where all livestock
has been fenced out, can kill a vast number of
perennial plants, if it continues too long. "Over-rest"
looks very much like overgrazing. In fact,
over-rest and overgrazing can happen at the same time,
even to the same plant. This is called partial
rest, and it is the most common cause of
desertification.

Partial Rest

Partial rest can also be explained with candy and
children.

Prepare your bowl every day, but after the children
have made their choice, only replace the things they
have taken. After a few days, they will get tired of
the candy, but unfortunately they will find that the
meat and the bread are spoiled and stale. Thus, they
will continue to "overgraze" the candy. Soon everything
in the bowl will be either "overgrazed" or over-rested.
Changing the number of children only makes one problem
worse than the other.

The same thing happens with grass. Grass that is not
eaten or knocked down gets stale and weakened by
over-rest. Plants that are bitten become overgrazed,
because they will send up fresh new leaves. Many plants
may die of both causes and the amount of bare ground
increases.

Over-resting soil causes even more damage, even
though we don't see it. Hard crusts seal out
water and keep seeds from sprouting. Dung and old
leaves never get below the surface, and the life there
begins to die.

This happens whenever animals are allowed to wander
here and there over the same area without ever coming
together in a herd that tramples the land.
Unfortunately this is the most common way of managing
livestock in all parts of the world. You see the
difference when tracking an animal. When grazing
quietly it hardly marks the soil and tramples few
plants. The same animal in a herd hammers the ground.
On the wild rangelands of the past, enormous numbers of
buffalo and antelope always moved in dense herds to
protect themselves from predators. Many traditional
herding cultures produced the same effect with long
migrations and herders who also had to guard against
attack. However, many of these old customs have died
away because of modern development.

Nevertheless, if you understand the principles of
grazing, overgrazing, animal impact, rest, and partial
rest you can rebuild the old
relationship between livestock and grass so that both
grow well.

Here are some bunches of perennial andropogon that
are being badly overgrazed (You can see the dark leaves
at the bases of the plants) right next to tall stems
and leaves that were rested until they became too tough
for animals to eat.

Points to Remember

- In non-brittle areas where the air is always
damp and rain falls in all seasons, plants will quickly
cover bare ground no matter what you do. Nothing can
stop them.

- In brittle areas where the year is divided
into wet and dry seasons, livestock or wild grazing
animals are necessary to keep the grass healthy and to
cover the soil with litter.

- In brittle areas, bare ground is caused by
repeated fire, overgrazing, but most of all
rest, both partial and total.

- Overgrazing is not caused by too many animals, but by
any animal that spends so much time in
one place that it can graze the same plants again and
again or if any animals can return to the same
place before the plants have recovered

- Many plants may suffer from over-rest even when
grazing animals are present if they stay widely
scattered, calm, and never move quickly in a tight
herd.

Tools

Land is a living thing. It is always changing. The
places where we walk today looked different when our
ancestors walked there. Our great grandchildren will
not see exactly what we see. Will their land be worse,
or will it be the land of our holistic goal?

Only three things can change land:

- Natural events like floods, droughts, lightning
fires, and frost.

- The succession of communities as the success of one
kind of plant or animal makes a place for another.

- We ourselves - people.

What happened in the past that changed the land into
what we see now?

Did the weather really change?

Did plants or animals start acting differently for some
reason?

Did people do something that changed the land,
AND the weather, AND the plants and animals?

You can answer these questions by looking at the
"tools" people have used on the land during the time
that it has changed. There are only six kinds of tools
that directly affect the land.

The Direct Tools

Rest and Partial Rest

Rest (see page 38) means keeping livestock and
other grazing animals from eating plants and trampling
on the land. It is a "tool" because people can rest
land or not rest land as they wish. Partial rest
(see page 39) has a similar effect. In this case a few
animals spread widely across the land for long periods
of time will leave many plants untouched while
overgrazing others.

In non-brittle areas where the air is always
damp and rain falls in every season rest allows
succession to go forward. In very non-brittle areas
rested ground will succeed from bare ground to forest
in a short time. Rest will also restore tired crop
fields.

In brittle areas where the year is divided into
wet and dry seasons, rest causes succession to stop or
go backwards.

- Grass often dies from over-rest.

- In brittle areas where the wet season is very wet,
weeds, bushes and small trees will grow on the bare
ground.

- In brittle areas where even the rainy season is
not good, rested grassland will turn to desert.

- Annual grass will often grow after a good rain on
over-rested land, but this is not as good as the
perennial grass that was lost. In dry years it does not
grow at all.

Look at your land

- Is it brittle? Is it non-brittle? Is it somewhere
in between?

- Is perennial grass disappearing?

- Can you find old, grey grass that smothers new
growth?

- Is bare ground increasing?

- Are weeds, bushes and small trees increasing?

Did rest or partial rest cause this?

Fire

Fire is natural. It is also a tool, because
people can set fires whenever they wish. It does
six things.

- Fire burns up dry and dead plants.

- Fire speeds up mineral cycling as ashes fall to
the ground.

- Fire sends many important nutrients into the air
as smoke.

- Fire sends the energy in the burned plants into
the air as heat.

- Fire kills seedlings and many small creatures as
well as many weeds.

- Fire starts some seeds growing and makes some
bushes thicker.

- Fire pollutes the air.

People use the tool of fire to:

- Clear fields and kill weeds.

- Burn over-rested grass, which grows back strong
and green in the ashes of the fire.

- Kill bushes and small trees that grow where rest
or partial rest has weakened the grass.

Fire, however, can damage all four ecosystem blocks,
especially when land burns nearly every
year.

- The water cycle suffers as fire burns up
litter and leaves bare ground.

- Even though the ash fertilizes plants, fire hurts
the mineral cycle because so much is lost in
smoke.

- Even though fire may help old, over-rested grass
plants succession suffers because fire kills
seedlings and many small creatures that improve the
soil. Annual grasses and weeds will slowly take the
place of perennial grasses, and certain trees and
shrubs that can survive fire will become thicker.

- Even though old grass may grow quickly right after
a fire, the total energy flow over several years
will be less because so much food goes up in smoke, and
bare ground increases.

Surely, technology can be good or bad and do many
different things, but there are some special dangers to
watch out for.

- Technology usually costs money or requires
labour.

- Machines, especially, break and wear out, and
caring for them and fixing them also costs money and
often requires special skills.

- Some technology is addictive. You start well, but
you need more and more to do the same job. Then, if you
stop, you suffer worse than ever. This is often true of
fertilizers, for example.

- Often technology solves one problem and creates
another. Poison that kills weeds may also poison the
water in wells nearby.

Look at your land

What kinds of technology were used here - hoeing,
cutting wood, building dams or erosion structures,
fertilizers, pesticides?

What was the effect on the ecosystem?

Living Organisms

Wild plants, insects, and animals are not usually
called "tools". They become tools when people
make them do things. Weeds and pests cause many
problems, but often because people give them the
opportunity. If you grow the same crops in the same
place every year, the weeds and pests that enjoy that
environment will increase every year.

On the other hand people can often use plants,
insects, and animals to help. For example:

- There are certain birds that eat ticks and
parasites off cattle. If you give them places to nest,
and do not poison them, your cattle may not need
dipping.

- Bats eat mosquitoes and army worm moths (which fly
at night). In some places people build "bat houses"
near their fields where the bats spend the day. Then at
night they protect the field against these pests.

- Certain plants, including some trees, put nitrogen
into the soil. Planting them, or just not cutting them
down will give you free fertilizer.

living things doing to change it?

What arepeople doing to help them
or hurt them?

Look at your land

What are plants, animals, insects, and other

Grazing and Overgrazing

Grazing is a tool for changing land, because
people can decide where and when their animals
graze. People can often control wild grazing animals
also. Sadly, most grazing now is overgrazing.
Overgrazing happens when any animals spend a
long time in the same area or return to it too soon and
bite off the same plants again and again while they
are growing. The number doesn't matter. (See page
33).

In non-brittle areas:

- Overgrazed grass plants often lie flat on the
ground to escape animals, and grass that spreads
through its roots or stems will take the place of grass
that depends on seed.

- You will see more weeds and plants that animals don't
eat, but the ground will not become bare.

- Patches of very overgrazed plants are often mixed
among over-rested patches where succession is trying to
rebuild forest.

Grazing as Tool for Improvement

The key is to harvest the grass before it chokes itself
but then give it time to recover. In
non-brittle areas, this will keep succession
from turning the grassland into forest. In
brittle areas you will use well-managed grazing
to push succession forward toward diverse perennials.
Together with the next tool, animal impact,
grazing does most of the good things that fire does.

In brittle areas:

- Overgrazed grass plants will lie flat on the
ground to escape animals. Others, and many bushes, will
grow thorns and thick branches. The most overgrazed
plants will weaken and begin to die in the middle.

- Where overgrazing kills plants, succession
brings in weeds and plants that animals don't eat.
Bare ground will increase, but much of the bare ground
may also be caused by partial rest.

- Where overgrazing is widespread, there will be
less litter to cover bare ground.

Look at your land

- Do you find overgrazed plants and other signs of
overgrazing?

- Do animals stay in one area for weeks during
the growing season?

In the past, has the land ever had a plan that
reduced overgrazing?

Animal Impact

Grazing is what animals do when they eat plants. Animal
impact is everything else that they do to the land -
trample, dung, urinate, fight, sleep. Like grazing,
animal impact is a tool, because people can
control when and where and how much animal impact a
piece of land gets.

Signs of unplanned animal impact are:

- Animal trails that are hard, bare, and often
eroding.

- "Capped soil" wherever the ground is bare, because
no animals have broken the crust.

- Manure that is scattered around and dry so it
stays outside the mineral cycle.

With good planning, you can use animal impact
to:

- Improve the mineral cycle by turning old
leaves and grass in to fertilizer, and putting the
fertilizer where you need it.

- Heal erosion and improve the water cycle by
breaking down the steep banks of gullies and breaking
the cap on the soil.

- Change succession by spreading and planting
seeds and breaking down brush and weeds.

Indirect Tools

All the "direct tools" do nothing without human
creativity and usually labour and money. These
"indirect tools" are maybe the most important of
all.

Money and Labour

Money and labour are considered one tool, because all
management requires one or the other and usually both
together. When people say that they can't do a job,
they most often complain about lack of money and lack
of workers. Sometimes this is true, sometimes not.

Human Creativity

Very often communities have enough money and labour to
at least begin to manage better, but they do nothing
because of fear, anger, mistrust, or bad organization.
Even children can usually invent something, if they
want it badly enough.

A real example:

This happened in a real village, but we will again call
it Makuza. The people wanted a borehole very much so
they could water their livestock. They asked the
government to drill one for them, but the government
agent refused. "There are hundreds of cattle in
Makuza," he said. "If every family agreed to sell some,
according to the size of their herd, you would have
enough money to drill several boreholes. Why do you ask
us?!!"

"We are afraid," they said. "There would be terrible
arguments about the money. How much would each family
give? Who would have the right to use this well? How
would the money be paid back? Who will fix the pump
when it breaks? Outsiders will think it is a government
borehole and come to use the water. If the government
digs us a borehole, then they will take responsibility
for all those things."

They lacked the "tool" of creativity.

A symbolic example:

Without lifting your pencil from the paper, connect all
nine dots with only four straight lines. Ask the
smartest people you know to do this, and you will
probably not find one who can. Most people quickly
decide that it is impossible.

We are all trained to never go outside of the box we
are given. Worse, we are trained to look for a box to
lock ourselves in.

Many problems in life are not problems, if you think
outside the square and find new ways to do what has to
be done. Anyone can make a list of "squares" that keep
us from even looking for new ideas:

We're too poor

Taxes are too high

Politics

Low prices

Drought

Not enough land

Weak leadership

No education

Look outside your box!!

Using "Tools" to "See" the Story of Land

Imagine Makuza Village, the village for all villages
on a hill above a wide vlei. In a village meeting, the
people are discussing their problems and the
degradation of their land.

Water

- Fifteen years ago a lake that once had fish, a
hippopotamus, and occasional crocodiles in it
disappeared after a great flood cut a gully that
emptied it.

- A stream that once flowed all the time now dries up
three months before the rainy season.

- The principal borehole dried out five years ago. The
government drilled it ten meters deeper and installed a
diesel pump, but at the moment the community has no
money to buy fuel for it.

- All the natural springs known in the past have
disappeared. However, six years ago a new spring began
to flow, which the people called "Surprise Spring".
Unfortunately, during a drought in the last year, this
one also failed.

The Vlei

- A gully has grown 50 meters a year for 20 years. At
the lower end it is as deep as a man. It is this gully
that emptied the lake. Now it has cut the community in
two.

- At the lower end of the vlei there are no more
perennial grasses, but small trees, especially ironwood
are now thick.

- A carpet of very short perennial grass still covers
much of the upper end of the vlei, but bare patches
began to open up during last year's
drought. Small bushes that most livestock will not eat
started growing here and there five years ago.

The Hillsides Below the Village

- The slopes were once forested, and large trees remain
here and there, but no small ones.

- The soil on the slopes is completely bare by the end
of the dry season. The surface is mostly sand, but in
some places stones, over a layer of very hard soil.

The Bush

- Here also most of the perennial grass has left. There
is much bare ground with a heavy crust.

- The brush has become much thicker. Large areas are
difficult to enter.

- Although wild animals are never seen on village land
during the day, lions, hyenas, baboons, and
occasionally elephants come from a nearby national park
and kill livestock and destroy crops.

Fields

- Recently people have begun to plant on much more
land, much of it in the vlei where floods often ruin
the crop. Several hundred hectares of brush have also
been cut down and planted, even in places where the
soil is not very good.

- In older fields the soil has lost fertility and
harvests are smaller every year.

A weed, which people once collected for medicine, has
suddenly started to grow everywhere. Villagers say that
hoeing "just makes it mad". Cut down one sprout and the
roots will send up ten.

Why??

The Chief

"When I was a boy, the vlei was all grass. During
the crop season, we took the animals to the bush,
because the vlei was too wet and it was too close to
the fields. When the grass grew tall, we cut all our
thatch there. Then the animals were turned in. They
stayed until just before the rains came. There were
fenced paddocks, so no one from other villages used our
land. The Government Administrator made us move our
livestock from paddock to paddock every few weeks so
plants wouldn't get overgrazed. At the end of the
season, we burned the paddocks, to bring new grass and
kill the brush.

"Then the war came, and independence, and all that
stopped. They drove off the Administrator and burned
his house. The fence wire was stolen. Under the new
government, the chiefs don't have any power, so we can
do nothing. People put their animals anywhere they want
and at any time. They even plant in the vlei sometimes
now. We fight all the time about that. And look at the
land."

The First Wife of the Chief

"What he says is true, but the real trouble is the
rain. We've had so much drought during the last ten
years. When we were young it was so green around here.
Now everything has dried out. Anyone can see it. Our
crops have failed five times in the last ten years. The
rains used to be long and gentle. Now, if we get any
rain, it rains too hard and everything floods. Angry
rain! Even the plants have turned against us. This
weed! My mother says she used to hunt for that plant
all day to make stomach medicine out of it. Now it is
everywhere, and it is killing us.

But this is all our fault. We are not living right,
especially the young people. They do not make their
sacrifices. They laugh at our ceremonies and do not
respect their parents. In the cities you see women
wearing pants. And there used to be people who could
pray for rain, and it came. Who even remembers how!?
What can anyone do? And look at the land.

All three of these people no doubt spoke some truth,
and there were other opinions as well. However, all the
discussion ended in fierce argument. The traditional
leaders and the ex-freedom fighters would never agree
that the Popular Front political party had caused the
trouble. Christians did not believe that only the old
traditions could bring rain. Young people did not think
rock music had caused the borehole to go dry. Those
with jobs in the park said that the village would
really starve during droughts without the money they
earned there.

Unfortunately none of these arguments could lead to
action. Everyone blamed outside forces that they could
not change - climate, politics, other people, spirits,
God. Why even talk about a holistic goal if we can do
nothing?

It is always difficult to handle this situation, but it
often helps to discuss the "tools" that have been used
on the land. If people can agree on what tool has
produced which effect, then they can talk about action.
They can change the use of the tool or try another one.
Action always leads to hope.

The Chief's Nephew

Those old people may be right in their way of seeing
things, but the real problem is not enough land. They
took our best land away from us to make that national
park. And now there are twice as many people here. We
can't make a living without more land. Look, thatching
grass still grows in the park. If we weren't so
crowded, it would grow here."

Tools Used in Makuza

The Vlei

Tools: First fire, then partial rest and
overgrazing.

Expected result: Repeated fires make ground
bare, kill grass seedlings and thicken some kinds of
brush. Partial rest and overgrazing will kill perennial
grass plants and succession will move to bushes and
trees, especially in places that are brittle but not
too dry, like most vleis.

Bare ground means a bad water cycle.
Worse, bare ground on the slopes and bush above a vlei
sends water rushing down in floods that erode gullies.
The gullies ruined the lake and dried out the land even
more. At the upper end of the vlei, the gully has not
yet drained the water from the soil. Perennial grass
still grows there, but it will soon look like the lower
end.

The Slopes

Tools: Fire, overgrazing, and unplanned animal
impact. Overgrazing and unplanned impact were
especially bad around compounds, because goats and
donkeys stayed in those areas all the time.

Expected result: Fire and overgrazing in a
brittle area will make bare ground and slowly destroy
perennial grass. At first bushes and trees may move in.
Then, as the water cycle gets worse and overgrazing
continues, they stop growing also. Unplanned animal
impact will cause trails, erosion, and hard ground
around all kraals.

The Bush

Tools: Rest, partial rest, overgrazing, and some
fire. But most importantly, the war ended the old
system of sending livestock into the bush in one herd
with community herders. Now livestock rarely go there
at all because of the lions from the park.

Fields

Tools: New technology was used on the fields
since independence. The main tools were ox-drawn plows
and chemical fertilizer. Fire was used to burn weeds
along the fences, and unplanned animal impact was used
all through the dry season.

Expected result: The plows kill weeds and make
planting easier, but they also dry and pack soil. This
hurts the water cycle and increases erosion. With
chemical fertilizer people can plant the same crops in
the same fields year after year without rest. However,
each year they need more
fertilizer as living things in the soil die. This also
makes the soil hard and makes the water cycle worse.

Plows allow people to farm much bigger fields. Big
fields planted the same way every year make a perfect
home for weeds. Succession will always find one that
takes over.

Water

All the tools used in all areas hurt the water cycle.
It is no surprise that rainwater now runs off the land
in floods and boreholes have dried up. That explains
even the "Surprise Spring".

When the land was healthy, the spring did not flow
because the grass and trees used most of the water.
When the grass died and many trees were cut, water ran
out of the ground. Then, as the bare ground became hard
and the old dead plant roots disappeared, rainwater no
longer soaked into the ground at all, and the spring
died.

What happens now?

After much discussion, the people of Makuza could agree
that they had to change the tools they were using on
the land, if they wanted to reach their holistic goal.
They would need creativity and maybe a little bit of
labor and money. Most of all,
they would need to trust each other and work together.

Certainly they will discuss many different plans. The
next chapter tells how to decide which ideas will lead
to a holistic goal.

Making Decisions

The Seven Tests

In the spirit of Holistic Management you should
consider using all the tools that allow us as human
beings to manage the ecosystem in order to achieve our
goals - something that other animals cannot do.

How do you decide which tools to use and how to use
them?

In the folklore of people in all parts of the world
there are stories that tell about a crisis or threat
that defeats all the strongest heroes of the village.
Then someone steps forward who is poorer or younger or
smaller than others. Frequently the surprise hero is a
woman who speaks after the men have failed. And that
person passes all the tests and saves the village with
new ideas and clear thinking.

The lesson of these stories is that it is dangerous to
only consider the opinions of experts and powerful
people. Better to gather ideas from all sides, from
young and old, men and women, rich and poor. But then
you still must decide what to do. How do you recognize
the best idea? How do you know when an old tradition,
long abandoned, should be revived? How can you tell
when an ancient custom can no longer help solve today's
problems?

Holistic Management is sometimes called a "way to make
decisions", and in fact it is a way to choose tools and
actions that will lead toward the quality of life,
forms of production, and future resource base foreseen
in a holistic goal. This chapter gives seven tests for
finding the ideas that will save the village and guide
it toward its holistic goal. Anyone young, old, rich,
poor, wise, or foolish can ask these questions at any
time, in the meetings of leaders, in family
discussions, in conversations in the market. You may
not need all seven questions for every decision, but
you should consider them all.

Sustainability

The questions are:

What will the plan do to the four pillars of the
ecosystem - water and mineral cycles, energy flow, and
succession?

And

If you take this action, will it lead toward or away
from the future resource base described in your
holistic goal?

When your action will directly affect your land, you
have to know two things to answer this question.

- How brittle is the area?

- What "tool" will the plan use?

Remember, the six direct "tools" - Rest, fire, grazing,
animal impact, living organisms, technology - are not
the only ones. Do not forget the others - Money &
Labor and Creativity. A small decision can often kill
or unleash these forces

Consider:

A plan to lend money to farmers?

A tax on livestock sold in the market?

A subsidy for truckers who haul fire wood.

Emergency food for drought relief?

Building a school?

Sending your children away to school?

Keeping your daughter at home to work?

What would any of these ideas do for your land? The
answers may not be clear, but thinking about them is
important.

When a proposed action does not directly affect
land, still test for sustainability!

Consider:

How might changing the quality of a product you sell
affect your business in the long term?

How might your participation in a community project
affect relations with your neighbors?.

The Weak Link

Every chain has a weak link. That link will break, if
the chain is pulled too hard.

Nothing you can do to the other links will make the
chain stronger. The links in the chains that will pull
you toward a holistic goal are made of
actions, people, and plants and animals, and there are
three chains to think about. Usually only one of the
three is important in any decision. The question is
always:

What is the weak link?

The Chain of Action (Social)

To do anything, even the wrong thing, usually
means meetings, discussions, contacting authorities,
settling arguments between people, finding money or
labor or both, training people, learning rules,
training, and many other small jobs. These are all
links in the Chain of Action. The weak link
might be:

- Families fighting

- Problems with neighbors

- Lack of training

- Political opposition

- Poor organization in the community.

Find the weak link and fix that. Doing anything else
first will be a waste of time.

The Chain of Wealth (Financial)

Most holistic goals list wealth and prosperity as part
of a good quality of life. The Chain of Wealth
leads from the sun to the land to the production from
the land to the wealth needed for a good quality of
life. It is really the same as energy flow.

- Turning the money into something useful, if possible
something to fix a weak link.

To have more wealth, you must find the weak link
and strengthen it.

Examples:

If your cows are starving, you must strengthen the
sun-plant link by finding more land or growing more
food (better energy flow). You should not buy more
cows.

If much of your grass is wasted and over-rest is a
problem, or if your land is full of plants that your
cows can't eat, then you must strengthen the
plant-animal link. Get more cows or get goats and sheep
to eat plants that the cows don't. More plants will not
bring more wealth, if you have no animals to eat them.

If you have plenty of animals, and they have plenty of
feed, but you cannot sell them or use them, and they do
not give you a better quality of life, then the
animal-wealth link is weak. You must find a way to get
more benefit from what you have.

The Chain of Life (Biological)

Life is a chain from birth to death. A seed falls. It
sprouts. It grows up. It makes more seeds. It dies.
Animals and people follow the same chain in their way.
If you want to help a particular plant or animal, you
must look at its Chain of Life, and strengthen
the weak link. On the other hand in the case of a weed
or a pest that you want to get rid of, look for the
link that is easiest to break.

Examples:

Suppose you want to restore a forest to supply wood for
building. Maybe there are no seeds. Maybe there are
plenty of seeds, but animals eat them as soon as they
sprout. Maybe the spouts grow but are cut for firewood
when they are still bushes. If in fact all the young
sprouts disappear before they grow because of unplanned
grazing, then arresting people for gathering firewood
will not save the forest.

On the other hand, suppose you want to get rid of
grasshoppers. Killing adult grasshoppers is difficult
and usually too late. They have already eaten their
fill. Many will have laid eggs. The weak link in the
life chain of grasshoppers is the egg. Grasshopper eggs
only survive well in bare, dry soil. If you can change
your management to keep the soil covered and damp, most
of the eggs die.

The next weak link is the time before young
grasshoppers can fly. Birds, toads, chickens, spiders
and other predators eat millions of them. Management
that encourages these "living organisms" will break
this link of the grasshopper chain.

Cause and Effect

Use this test when you want to fix a problem on the
land or with people. You will make many decisions that
are not about fixing problems. For example: You
are not trying to solve a problem on the land when you
ask, "Should I sell my maize crop or keep it for the
family to eat?" However, "Should I buy fertilizer to
make my tired field grow more maize?" is a decision
about a land problem. The question is:

Does your idea cure the cause of the problem,
or does in only make the effect less
painful?

If rain comes through your roof, you can fix the thatch
or you can move your bed. Fixing the thatch cures the
cause. Moving your bed only makes the
effect less painful.

Most land problems are caused by the tools used
on the land. So, fixing land problems will mean
changing the way the tools are used or using different
tools.

Example:

The soil is bare on slopes above the vlei at Makuza
village. That is the problem. Fire and overgrazing are
the tools that caused the bare soil. You might
improve the water and mineral cycles by digging erosion
ditches across the slope. You might try to improve
succession by planting grass and bushes. These ideas
may make the effects of the bare ground less painful,
but the problem will not go away until you change the
way you use the "tool" of grazing. (Fires have stopped,
because the ground is bare.)

Energy and Wealth, Source and Use

Example:

You can dig an irrigation ditch with oxen and hand
labor or with a bulldozer and diesel shovel. Even
though the oxen and men work slower, all of the energy
and money comes from the land. The community will not
have to beg or borrow money from outside or pay for
machinery or energy like diesel.

This test is most important for decisions about
technology and spending money, especially when the
holistic goal includes independence and sustainability.
There are several questions:

Do the money and energy for this project come from
the land itself (the chain of wealth), or must you
borrow or beg from outside?

Is energy and wealth taken from the land in a
sustainable way?

Example:

Firewood is energy from the land. It should pass this
test better than diesel, paraffin, or coal that costs
money and some day will be used up. However, cutting
wood in a way that destroys the forest forever does not
pass this test.

Sometimes, of course, you will use outside help,
machinery, and fuel. Then the question is:

Does the money build something that will last for a
long time, or will you have to buy the same thing over
and over again?

For example:

With chemical fertilizers, you can grow the same crop
year after year in the same field. But, every
year you must buy more than the year before. Then, if
you stop, the field dies. The same money spent on
kraals, or fences, or an irrigation ditch, or a road,
or drainage, would build something that would last for
years. It would help turn more of the sun's energy into
wealth every year without much more expense.

Marginal Reaction

This is a test for deciding between two ways of doing
the same thing. A "margin" means "something extra" and
"marginal reaction" is "what you get for doing
something extra. The question is:

What will bring you farthest toward your holistic
goal for the smallest extra amount of money, labor, or
trouble, this year?

Example:

Your holistic goal includes enough food, even in
drought. Should you use your time to mulch your field
to cover the soil and improve water and mineral cycles
or build a kraal so you can keep livestock. This year
the mulch may give you the biggest marginal
reaction. Later, when your soil is healthy, the
kraal may give a bigger marginal reaction.

Gross Profit

If profit is in your holistic goal, you use this test
to help decide what businesses to build. It is the only
test that always requires numbers and mathematics. The
question is:

For each business, how many extra dollars (or
francs, rand, pound, etc.) will you get back for each
one that you must spend on that business?

Example:

You are thinking of: a) buying a mill. b) planting
cotton. c) buying cattle and placing them with a family
to herd them. Each of these will require money. How
much will you get back each year for each dollar (rand,
pound) you spend. Remember, your labor is also a cost.

Society and Culture

The question is:

How do you and the other people in your "whole" feel
about your decision?

This test is perhaps the most important of all because
no project will succeed if many people have strong
feelings against it. Often projects that are
technologically and economically good touch a cultural,
religious, or social issue that makes them
unacceptable. Talking about these issues demands
sympathy, honesty and trust, because many people don't
like to discuss them publicly. However, if they are not
settled, no action will succeed.

Example:

The government offers to build fenced paddocks for a
grazing scheme, but they insist that people pay $200 to
join a grazing cooperative before they use it. Also,
only cattle can graze there. In that community only a
few rich families own cattle and can pay the fee. Most
families own goats. The scheme fails the society and
culture test. No one in the village is surprised
that every night some of new wire disappears until the
whole scheme fails.

Using the Seven Tests

The seven testing questions will always make a decision
better. They do not always make it easier. Practice
helps, and there are a few rules.

- Always have a three part holistic goal in
mind.

The best decisions come when the people of the "whole"
agree on a written holistic goal, but you do not have
to wait for that. You can test any decision, if
you have a holistic goal.

Example: The community is discussing a new well. Anyone
can say, "My goal is stopping fights with our neighbors
who want to use our water (Quality of Life), because we
all graze our animals in the same area (Production),
and I'd like to see our dried out springs come back
(Future Resource Base). Is this plan going to fix the
cause of these problems (bare ground) or just make them
less painful for a while?

- Gather all the information you can and discuss the
decision in the familiar way before using the seven
tests.

The tests do not substitute for understanding the
situation or change the need to know all the facts.
They only help decide which actons will get you to your
holistic goal most quickly.

Example: You are considering starting a cooperative to
gather, transport and sell firewood. You need to know
all the regulations, prices, and other people who will
be involved by this as well as their politics. While
this information is collected and discussed it may
become clear to everyone that this
project willnot help reach their holistic goal.
If you think it might, then use the tests.

- Be sure you test only one decision at a time, and
take the simplest one first.

Example: Your daughter asks, "May I have money so I can
go to the city and get training as a nurse?" That is
several decisions:

Should she get more training?

Should she become a nurse?

Should she go to the city?

Should she have money?

Test these one at a time.

- If you can't answer a test question quickly and
easily, drop it and go to the next one. Especially,
don't worry about cause and effect, if the
decision is not about solving a problem. Also, there
are three chains in the weak link test, but most
decisions only use one of them.

Example: Does sending your daughter to the city pass
the Gross Profit test? Is her training going to
fix the cause of some problem? These questions are
interesting, but maybe there is no problem, and maybe
her Holistic Goal includes helping others but not
becoming rich.

- An argument often means no one has enough
information to answer the question.

Example: You are arguing over whether to plant cotton
or ground nuts. Which one will give you the best
Gross Profit? You say ground nuts, because you
made money last year, and your neighbor's cotton
failed. Your son says cotton, because the price of
cotton has gone up. You cannot begin to settle this
argument, until you write down all the numbers and
prices and learn why your neighbor's crop failed and
think through all the risks.

- An argument often means you have forgotten your
holistic goal or it needs to be changed or the
whole needs to be bigger.

Example: The leaders of a village decide to stop
unplanned grazing. The holistic goal is to cover bare
ground and let succession bring back grasses and
other plants that have disappeared. However, fences are
cut and stolen in the night, and some livestock is even
killed. Did the whole include the people who cut
fences? What was their goal? The holistic goal
called for "prosperity" (Quality of Life) but the
community really wanted "prosperity and harmony". The
leaders had made a plan that would give most of the
prosperity to people who were already rich.

- If an idea fails several important tests, look for
ways to improve it before throwing it out. You may
have to accept a bad idea, but you can often change
it to help reach your holistic goal anyway.

Example: A small drought destroys village crops,
because unplanned grazing and growing cotton in the
same fields for too long has ruined water and mineral
cycles. Fortunately, an international development
agency sends free bags of grain. This may pass
Society and Culture. Without help, the village
will die. However, it fails Cause and Effect.
Can food change bad grazing and farming?

Why not? If the holistic goal includes healthy land,
the people who have no crops to harvest might work for
their food by building fences or kraals to improve the
grazing or spreading manure and mulch and stopping
erosion in the fields. The food aid could also work in
other ways. If the holistic goal included education the
food could pay people to make bricks for a school.

Using Your Animals

Unplanned grazing and animal impact are the
"tools" that cause many problems:

Bare ground

Loss of perennial plants

Weeds

Erosion

Starving animals during the dry season

These problems usually mean unhealthy water and mineral
cycles and a weak energy flow. Succession goes down.

To reach a holistic goal of covered soil, perennial
grass, healthy communities of plants and animals (high
succession), and low erosion, you must change the way
you use grazing and animal impact.

Grazing

The easiest and most important change you can make
is TIME. To manage time well you
don't need more land, and you don't need
fewer animals!!

- During the growing season, give plants, especially
grasses, enough time to grow back after animals
bite them off, and the land may improve quickly.

- During the dry season you manage time so your
animals don't eat the best forage at the beginning and
starve at the end.

You manage time by:

- Putting animals together in large herds that stay
together while they graze.

- Moving the herds from one grazing area to another -
at least 10 areas but 100 or more, if you can.

For the growing season the key principle is:

Fewer herds and more grazing areas
mean more time for plants to grow.

Even a big herd that does not stay long in one place
cannot bite off new leaves while they are growing back.

The herd should move from one grazing area to another,
and it should not come back to the same place before
the plants are ready to be grazed again.

These drawings show how more grazing areas make more
time for plants to grow back.

Ten cows on the veld for six weeks
will overgraze many plants as they look for the fresh
new leaves that grow back on the plants they have
bitten before. Other plants are over-rested.

Ten cows in the same veld divided into
two grazing areas still eat the same amount of
grass, but all plants now have at least three weeks of
TIME to grow back.

The same ten cows still eat the same amount of grass
in six weeks , but now all the plants have at least
five weeks to grow back.

If a herder moves his animals every day for 42 days,
plants have 41 days to grow back.

When plants are growing quickly (2 cm/day) a herd
should move at least every three or four days.
But, this quick-growing grass might be ready to
graze again in 30 days or even less. When plants grow
slowly, a herd may stay in one place much longer, and
the longer they stay in each area, the more time each
area will have before they come back.

The more grazing areas, the better. It is difficult to
stop overgrazing with less than 10. With only five or
six areas, animals must stay a long time in each one or
they will come back too soon. But, when plants
are growing fast, many will get bitten twice before the
herd moves.

During the non-growing season the key principle
is:

Manage time and grazing areas to make sure your
animals eat well.

In each grazing area the animals will eat a mixture of
rich and poor plants.

As the herd moves through the grazing areas, you can
easily tell how much forage they have eaten and how
much they have left for the rest of the season.

Even at the end of the season each new grazing area
should have almost the same mixture of rich and poor
plants that it did at the beginning.

These drawings show how animals graze. if they are
scattered across the land.

First they will eat all the best food in terms of
protein, energy, and fiber.

Next they will choose plants that are not so good,
because they contain less of what the animals need to
remain healthy.

At the end of the season only the least nutritious
plants will be left, and during the season it is very
difficult to see how much forage they really have eaten
until it is all gone.

These drawings show how stock eats the same food
when land is divided into grazing areas.

In each area they eat both rich and poor plants,
taking what they need to balance their diets. Old Grass
is likely to be trampled down in place.

Very soon, you can see if the food will last until
the end of the season.

Even at the end, the animals still will have both
rich and poor plants.

Animal Impact

Often succession will not go forward, even after
overgrazing has stopped, because too much rest
is causing the problem. If the animals are always calm
when they visit a grazing area the "tool" is partial
rest. All the rest of the year the "tool" is
total rest.

A big herd that moves often, gives the land more animal
impact than many small herds scattered over the land,
but you can do more.
Bad patches of bare ground, capped soil, over-rested
plants, weeds and bushes, or erosion may need more
trampling. When you move the herd to water or from
kraals to the grazing area, you can often plan to give
animal impact to these special places.

Feeding maize husks, millet stalks, or salt in these
places will also give them more animal impact.

Water

Problem: Many small springs and wells.

Solutions: Small herds are watered daily by owners,
then combined in one herd for the day's grazing.

Storage tanks are dug by each water point (can be
lined with cheap plastic sheet) and teams draw water in
advance according to a schedule.

Problem: Big central water source where herds often
wait for hours for their turn to drink.

Solutions: Schedule arrival times to eliminate
waiting.

Problem: A lake or river bank turns to stinking
desert because many herds crowd into it and stand for
long periods.

Solution: Schedule big herds to arrive at different
times and limit access with fencing. (Change this as
needed to control animal impact and overgrazing and
rest to areas where your holistic goal calls for brush
and trees.

If you can manage your stock in a large and very dense
herd that gives plants and soil a lot of animal impact,
and if you move them over a large area so plants and
soil get a lot of time to recover before the herd comes
back, you will have the best land.

Often, however, water problems make this extremely
difficult. A large herd drinks a lot. Also, they have
to all drink at the same time, if you want to keep them
together. If you are planning a new water or borehole
or asking a government agency to construct one, you
should think hard about where to put it, the storage
tanks and drinking troughs required, and who will
manage maintenance and use.

For big herds, especially in an area used by other
villages, nomads, and wildlife, putting a new water
point right next to your village may be a bad idea.
Plan carefully with all the people who will use it,
including your neighbors and any groups who use the
area seasonally. A thoughtful plan also helps win
support for the project.

Usually, however, you will have to do the best you can
with what you have. It won't be perfect, and it will
mean organizing PEOPLE. Every case is different, but
here are some common ones.

Aide Memoire for a Simple Grazing Plan

Step I - Make a map of the "Whole"

You may make this map in the sand as a group, but you
must also make a copy on paper. It should show details
like kraals, water points, houses, and landmarks. It
should be close to real scale. Areas that are big
should be big. Areas that are small should be small.

Printed maps and aerial photographs are helpful if the
scale is large. You can cover them with plastic and
draw on the plastic with felt pens. It is best to plan
with special felt pens that you can erase.

The map should show everything that is important for
management

Kraals

Dips

Water points

Crop fields and gardens

Vlei, bush, fallow land, forest, etc.

Poison plant danger

Special plant communities (medicines,

thatch, etc.)

Problem areas (floods, insects, fires, etc.)

Driveways and roads.

In holistic management you make a plan, evaluate your
progress as you carry it out, and correct the plan as
soon as you see it going wrong. You usually plan
grazing twice a year - once for the growing season, and
again for the non-growing season. In the first plan you
want the land to produce as much forage as possible. In
the non-growing season plan you try to make your forage
last until new growth starts. You make this second plan
at the beginning of the non-growing season.

The planning can be very simple. You want to have your
animals together in one herd if possible and move them
from one grazing area to another. The grazing areas do
not need fences, if herders agree on the boundaries,
and they are well marked for others who may use the
area. The time animals spend in each area will depend
on the richness of the forage, the number of areas, and
the rate of growth. You can also plan to create animal
impact in key places by using salt, supplemental feed
or herding.

The Growing Season

You will manage the land, the animal, and wildlife so
that:

- The veld grows as much forage as possible
every year.

- Care of livestock, crops, and other activities all
fit together

- You move toward your holistic goal.

- The plan passes the seven tests.

Step II - Decide the grazing areas

Divide the land into grazing areas and mark them on the
map. Make as many as you can, but try to have at least
ten. For each grazing area think about:

- Water

- How animals will go there and come back

- Where animals will stay at night

- Care (Young animals, milking, breeding, etc.)

- Special problems (nearby crops, land arguments,
flooding, etc.)

- How to mark the boundaries.

Give each area a name or number so you can discuss it
with others. This step will need a great deal of
thought and discussion. There are literally hundreds of
possibilities for any situation. Most of them will not
look at all like the drawing on the page 81. Grazing
areas (paddocks) may fan out from central kraals or
water points like the spokes of a wheel. You may have
corridors for rapid movement of stock to water between
crop fields. You may build new kraals far from
settlements. Consider all possibilities. But remember:

Fences may be useful to protect crops and save labour
costs in countries like the USA where herders are
difficult to find, but they are expensive, your
neighbors probably won't like them and may steal the
wire, and you can't change them easily when you change
your plans. But most of all, you would have to build a
great many to handle animals as well as a few good
herders can.

Example:

You have marked out 20 grazing areas (paddocks) with 20
approaches to water and kraals, but while your herders
use each paddock they graze a different small piece of
land each day. If they do this for ten days in each
paddock, they will graze 200 places for one day each,
and plants
will have 199 days to recover. This should give good
results on your land and good feed for your animals.

Step III - Decide recovery periods

A plant needs time to grow back after an animal bites
it. In brittle areas where the rain is often poor it
may need 150 days or more. In many non-brittle areas
and when rainfall is good, it may need only 20 - 40
days. In irrigated pastures maybe 15 - 30. A drought of
course changes everything.

This aide-memoire is based on a recovery time of 90
days. That is safe for most places, but you must
make your own judgement. During times when plants
are growing very fast (more than 2 cm a day that you
actually measure) you may shorten the recovery time to
as little as 30 days.

If you have ten grazing areas, and your herd stays 10
days in each one, then all will have 90 days recovery
time, and the whole cycle takes 100 days. If you have
more than 10 grazing areas, you get even more recovery
time and shorter grazing times. For your first plan, it
is usually safe to use a 100-day cycle, but if you want
more than 90 days recovery, use a longer cycle.

Step IV - Decide grazing times

Collect pebbles or markers for the days in the cycle
(100 for a 100-day cycle) and distribute them among the
grazing areas on the map. Give more to the areas that
are richer or bigger. Give less to poorer areas. If one
promises twice as much forage as another it will get
twice as many days (pebbles) of grazing.

Step V - Plan the grazing

You need your map and a "time line". The time line can
be drawn in the sand, on paper, or on a chalk board. It
is a line marked off in days like a tape measure.

The map on page 81 is surrounded by a time line that
shows a growing season that goes from October 1 to the
middle of March, about 165 days.

Mark on the line the days that the herd will spend in
each grazing area. From the pebbles you know how many
days the herd should stay in each area when growth is
slow. Identify the areas along the line so people can
see on the map where the herd will be on each day. You
may use symbols of some kind or push sticks into the
sand. If you use paper do not use permanent pens or
markers, because there will be a lot of
discussion about this and you will make many changes.

- Is a grazing area really free?

- Do you want the herd in a certain area at a
certain time?

- Where do you need to keep forage for the
non-growing season? (You will want to give that plenty
of time to grow back.)

- Can you avoid starting in an area that you grazed
at the end of the last growing season?

Check all the recovery periods on the time line. Are
they all close to 90 days? Probably some
areas are grazed once and others twice. If you drew
this line in the sand, copy it on paper and put it on a
calendar.

Step VI - Following the plan

Dividing up the grazing times among several grazing
areas will help stop overgrazing, but skillful herders
who move their herd day by day (or even hour by hour)
through each area will help the land very much more.

In the illustration there are only 15 main grazing
areas, but in practice there may be 100 or more if
herders keep their animals together and move them day
by day.

By far the best plan is to move one herd to new
ground every day like the illustration shows, but very
often life is much more complicated. Maybe there are
nomads that come through the area. Maybe there is one
herd of goats and sheep and another of milking cattle.
Maybe some families refuse at first to put their
livestock into the community herd, but they share the
holistic goal. With good herders these herds can stay
separate but all go into the same grazing area
according to the grazing plan.

Always be flexible and aware of reality. No plan will
be perfect. At the beginning, many places may continue
to degrade - water points and driveways for example.
While you look for solutions, you can accept this if
most of the land is improving toward your holistic
goal. However, you must act to change the plan whenever
your observations and common sense justify it.

if you have more than 30 grazing areas or herders
who move often.

- If you don't know if plants are growing fast,
follow the plan for slow growth (150 days recovery or
more).

- Don't forget animal impact. The grazing
plan will stop overgrazing, but often most of your
problems come from rest and partial rest of
soil. If animals only visit an area three times a
year and are always calm and slow, the land will get
three short periods of partial rest and most of the
time total rest. Use salt, extra feed, or herding as
often as you can to make real animal impact wherever
you need it most.

- Watch how fast plants grow after they are
bitten. Perennial plants are most important. Put a
stick in the ground beside grazed plants and look at
them every day.

- The most dangerous mistake is to come back
to a grazing area too soon. Especially in drought, the
animals themselves will push their own herders to move
quickly to new areas. In fact they must move
slower! You can only give plants more recovery time
by staying longer in each area.

- Also dangerous is staying too long in a
grazing area when plants are growing fast. Plants will
bite new leaves before the plants have recovered. This
can happen when there are only a few grazing areas and
you do not change the plan when plants grow fast. It is
not a problem

The Non-Growing Season

Key Principles

- Plants don't stop growing at the same time.
Perennial plants and the plants in vleis and wet places
may keep growing after annual plants are already brown.
Overgrazing is still a danger for these plants.

- Overgrazing is not a danger where plants have
truly stopped growing, but management of time is
still important for crop fields, wildlife, water
resources, etc.

- As in the growing season, it is best to plan as
many grazing areas as possible. Management is simpler
if you keep the animals in a single herd, but you have
more flexibility than during the growing season.

- Normally you plan for your animals to move through
all your grazing areas only once. Otherwise, they will
take the best forage from all of them early in the
season and leave nothing for the end.

- Always plan a "time reserve". That means, you plan
for the months until growth should start
plus extra time in case it doesn't.

- If you plan to put the animals on crop fields be
sure that a dense herd never stays in one place more
than one or two days. Keeping many animals on the field
for a long time will pack the soil.

Step VII - The number of animals

Except in time of extreme drought, very few animals
starve during the growing season, so the number of
animals is usually not a problem then. With a good
grazing plan you can feed many more animals than you
did before, and you are now using them as a tool to
reach your holistic goal. With more animals you can
create more animal impact.

Nevertheless, if your livestock finish all the green
food and begin picking up litter well before they
are supposed to move to the next grazing area, you
may have too many animals. Think before you sell
any, however. Is the grazing area too small? Can you
change the plan? Can you combine several herds together
so you use more grazing areas?

Step IV - Decide how many days of forage each area
must give

Gather stones or markers for the days in the plan (230
in the example), and distribute them among the grazing
areas on the map according to the value of each one.
Give the richest areas more, and the poorest areas
less.

You now know how many days each area must feed
your animals, so they will live until growth starts
again. You don't know yet if the forage is really
there, but you will soon find out.

Step V - Plan your grazing

You need your map and a "time line". The time line can
be a line in the sand or on paper or on a chalk board.
Mark the line like a measuring tape with the days in
your plan.

Now, mark along the line the time you will spend in
each grazing area. The stones tell you how many days
you can spend in each area. Put sticks in the sand or
draw symbols to show which grazing areas are marked.

Normally a herd should go through all the grazing areas
once before new growth starts. For each grazing area
save enough stones so your animals can go through them
all a second time if growth starts late.

In practice, every plan will be different. If your
herders can move all the animals day by day, they can
graze the land in hundreds of different ways. However,
they must be able to remember where they have been.
Then they can always see how much land remains for the
rest of the season.

Step I - Make a map of the "Whole"

You may use the same map as before, but think about
differences.

- Water points that dry up.

- Land traditionally used only in the non-growing
season.

- Crop lands that are now open for animals.

Step II - Decide your grazing areas

You may need to change your grazing areas. Put as many
on your map as you can. Again, the best plan is to have
herders that move a single herd day by day. But,
grazing areas on a map will help you make a plan that
fits your holistic goal. Also people can discuss the
plan better when they can see a map.

When you decide on grazing areas, think about:

- Crop fields

- Water

- Fire, theft, wild animals, neighboring herds,
etc.

- Areas already grazed at the end of the growing
season.

Step III- Decide the length of the plan

You should plan for the time until you hope
growth starts plus extra time in case it starts
late.

Example:

Your plan starts in mid March, and you expect rain
October 1 (200 days), but sometimes nothing grows
before November 1. So you plan for 230 days.

Step VI - Use the plan to foretell the future

During the growing season, animals almost never starve.
Hunger comes in the last months of the non-growing
season. When you know that your forage will be gone two
months before rains come you can:

- Make plans to take your herds to better land.

- Buy feed while the price is low.

- Sell animals while the price is still high.

By following your plan, you will quickly see how long
your forage will last.

- Start in one of the smallest grazing areas in your
plan.

- If your animals eat all the grass before you plan
to move them, you should worry about problems later.
(Animals should not have to eat all the litter off the
ground.)

- If the same thing happens in the second and third
grazing area, you can probably figure out exactly when
you will finish all of them.

- On the other hand, if your herd stays in the first
grazing areas for all the days in the plan and still
leaves something, you can be sure that all will go well
until the end of the season.

Example:

You have 15 grazing areas for 230 days from mid March
to November. Your plan shows eight days for the first
grazing area, but the feed is gone after six. This
happens again in the second grazing area. If that
happens in all grazing areas, you have forage for only
3/4 of your 230 days. It will be finished by the end of
August, but you have over four months to prepare.

On the other hand, suppose the rainy season was poor.
Everyone is panicking, but you have been through the
first two or three grazing areas in your plan without
any trouble. You will be happy to know that your
animals will in fact survive.